HERE’S A STORY IN WHICH AN ARCHAEOLOGIST CLAIMS TO HAVE DISCOVERED "THE CAVE OF JOHN THE BAPTIST."
He hasn’t.
At least, there appears to be inadequate evidence to propose that he has.
The cave, which is located on the grounds
of Kibbutz Tsuba just outside Jerusalem, is "about an hour’s donkey
ride from Ein Kerem, the village where Christian tradition says John
was born," Gibson says.It is also on the edge of the Judean desert, where John was known to hold spiritual retreats.
He decided to start excavating after
discovering a crudely-drawn picture of John the Baptist carved into the
limestone walls "dressed in camel hair robes" as described in the
Gospel of Matthew.Several crosses and a rough drawing of a
severed head were also carved into the walls, illustrating John’s death
by beheading at the hands of Herod Antipas, ruler of the northern
Galilee region at the time.Underneath the picture of John is a small niche "designed for a relic", Gibson explains.
"These drawings are the work of Byzantine
monks who used to gather in the cave to tell the history of John the
Baptist," he said, pointing out an area around the eyes where vandals,
or iconoclasts, had tried to destroy the pictures.Excavations, which took place between
2000 and 2003 in conjunction with a team from the University of North
Carolina, revealed a space some 24 metres (yards) long, 4.5 metres wide
and four metres high, with 18 huge steps leading down to a large
rectangular pool."Its use for baptism rituals dates back to the Iron Age, the era of the kings of Judea," he said.
Okay.
So it’s a cave near Ein Karem. Lots of caves in the area. Doesn’t prove John the Baptist went to this one.
It’s got carvings from Byzantine monks who met there centuries after John’s time to talk about and presumably pray to John the Baptist. Again, doesn’t prove he was there.
Oh, and it’s got a mikvah in it. Big whoop. There are ancient mikvahs all over the place in Israel. Ritual immersions were a major ceremonial practice in ancient Judaism, and the fact you’ve turned up a mikvah–even a mikvah near Ein Karem–in no way proves the presence of John the Baptist. What were all the people in the area who weren’t John the Baptist supposed to do for their ritual immersions?
Further, though the way the story is worded is ambiguous, Gibson may be saying that this mikvah dates back to the Iron Age, in which case it predates John by centuries.
All of this hardly justifies the claims Gibson is apparently making for the place:
"The first concrete evidence of the existence of John the Baptist has been found on site," 46-year-old Shimon Gibson told AFP.
Gibson, who holds a degree from
University College London and has written several works on Biblical
archaeology, believes the discovery to be "the first archaeological
proof of the historical veracity of the Gospels".
This is nothing more than the archaeological snake oil that is regularly peddled to tourists in Israel, where a spot that has no verifiable connection with a biblical figure or figures will be pronounced to have such a connection for purposes of making it a tourist destination so the locals can make money off it. (E.g., "the field of the shepherds," which is just a field near Bethlehem that nobody can remotely prove is where the angel appeared to shepherds to tell them about Jesus’ birth).
Now, I don’t want to diss biblical archaeology at all. There are some sites where we know for a fact
that this is exactly where someone was or something happened. (These
are the sites that impress me most.) I just get frustrated with the
overinflated claims made for many of these places for purposes of
tourism.
John the Baptist’s cave, which has been restored by Kibbutz Tsuba, will be opened to the public early next year.
Big surprise.
This is one of the stupidest things about this whole story: “Gibson . . . believes the discovery to be ‘the first archaeological proof of the historical veracity of the Gospels.'”
Excuse me, but didn’t they say the same thing when they discover archaeological evidence of Pontius Pilate in the Holy Land? And when they discovered the tomb of Caiaphas?
In any case, even apart from archaeological proof, there’s ample historical proof of the Gospels’ historical veracity. Finding archaeological relics are extra special things to have, but don’t increase or diminish the historicity of the Gospel accounts.
Jimmy, don’t worry, you’re not “dissing” Biblical archeology here, you’re keeping it from disintegrating into shallow tourist promotionalism. You da Man. edp.
I’ve seen the right hand of John the Baptist. It’s in a Serbian Orthodox Monastery in Cetinje (the old royal capital of Montenegro). Apparently the commies stole it for a while from the monks, but the museum curator kept having nightmares, so they returned it.
Chris